Meditation: On the Nature of Attachment
by Inyri Ascending
Summary: She is a Jedi first, always. She tells herself it is better that way. (A story about Satele, set in the Equivalent Exchange universe.)


**Meditation: On the Nature of Attachment**

It's better this way.

Her mother wanted to marry, they say, wanted it so badly she argued her case to the Council. (Defiance runs in their blood, she supposes, all the way back to Revan and Bastila three hundred years ago. The Shans were never much for following rules when it came down to it.) Satele was only a child, then, no more than three when Tasiele stopped visiting the crèche, and she didn't understand why- only that one day she was there, the pretty woman who used to feed her sweets when the crèchemaster wasn't looking, and the next she wasn't.

She doesn't hear the word _exiled_ until she is ten and then it's a whisper, mouth to ear, two Masters' eyes following her as she walks through the temple corridor. She knows enough by then, from other whispers, to understand, and twists her Padawan braid anxiously around one finger.

At nineteen she inherited her mother's journals, leatherbound books written in copper-plate script, a note tucked into the first volume. _For my daughter._ A final defiance.

Her mother was strong.

She is afraid that she is not. Not strength in the Force or strength in battle: she has plenty of that, though not enough to keep Jace safe; she focuses on the burn scars running along the side of his face so she doesn't have to look at his eyes, instead imagining for a moment the two of them, rings on fingers and hand in hand on a Coruscant promenade with their child- their son- running joyfully ahead.

(It is a boy. She is sure of that, somehow, even scarcely eight weeks gone.)

But that is not how their story is likely to end, and she imagines other things, too- wars yet to come, battles yet to be fought, a thousand ways he could die in a thousand possible futures and in every single one she lays waste to the Empire, lost to rage and grief.

For him, she would fall. She knows it in her bones. She's not strong enough not to, and when he speaks of the war and the hate in his voice makes her shiver she knows he will do the same, someday.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm sorry, Jace, but I can't do this any more."

She's not strong enough to stay, but she is strong enough to leave.

* * *

"Do you want to hold him," he asks, "one last time? Before you go?"

Ngani's holding the baby out toward her- _her_ baby; _his name is Theron_ , she'd said- wrapped tightly in a length of brown fabric; there was little to do in these last months but read and meditate and sleep and as she wore out her clothing she cut them into pieces and stitched them carefully into blankets and swaddling clothes, all the things she thought a child might need.

(She has no idea what a child might need, to be perfectly honest. Somehow her old Master does, though, thank the Force, had tins of powdered formula and bottles and other useful things in a crate on his shuttle. _In every war there were orphans,_ he'd said, shrugging, _and when you spend enough time in refugee camps even Jedi learn to mix up meals and change diapers.)_

He's a good baby. Every mother says that, probably, but it's true: he's been so quiet in these first few days, by turns sleeping and looking around through half-shut eyes and crying only rarely, calming quickly when he's fed or when Ngani walks with him back and forth across the cave floor. She is glad of that. When he cries she wants to hold him, her breasts aching despite the tight band around her chest and her stomach cramping, a ferocious instinct she didn't think she had until the first time she felt him move.

Theron stirs, blinking, tiny hands pushing out from beneath the blanket, ten tiny perfect fingernails on the fingers that she remembers curling reflexively around one of hers-

She shakes her head. "It's better if I don't."

That is a lie, she thinks. It is _easier_ if she doesn't. It is necessary that she doesn't. Whether it is better is a different question.

Ngani nods, sets him back in the makeshift cradle. "You're leaving, then?"

"Yes. I'm well enough to travel. The longer I stay-"

"I understand."

She lifts her bag onto her shoulder and starts toward the cave mouth before he stops her, pulling her into a brief embrace.

"Be well, Satele, and may the Force be with you," he says, a benediction familiar as breathing. "He'll find his way back to you in time, I think."

"And with you." She bows her head as he lets her go. "I know. I- hope so."

"When he asks about his mother, what would you like me to tell him?"

She looks, one last time, toward her son. "The truth."

* * *

She made him swear he would not contact her and he kept his word. She knew, if he sent messages, sent updates or holos of Theron as he grew and progressed in his training, that even if she forced herself to delete every one she'd eventually slip, open the message just to see-

It's better this way. It has to be.

* * *

She scans the beginning lines of the message a second time, then a third, curled on the floor in her sleeping chamber with her knees tucked up to her chest.

 _To Knight Satele Shan of the Jedi Order, from Master Till'in of the Haashimut enclave:_

 _By the grace of the Force, I hope that this message finds you well. I do not know how to say this without implying an insult I do not mean, so I will write as plainly as I can. I have news of your son._

She loads the attached file- a holo, to judge by the format- as she reads.

 _Be assured, first, that he is well. He came to the enclave three weeks ago, having walked, per his report, nearly twenty miles from the meditation caves to present himself for training. Though he was very ill upon his arrival, after some time in the infirmary he is physically entirely recovered. But I am afraid, Knight Shan, that we have nothing further to offer the boy. He cannot feel-_

The image springs to life, a little figure rising from the display she cups in her hand. It-

 _Oh._

* * *

They sent him away.

They sent him _away_. Ngani didn't even tell him, damn him, leaving that task to Master Till'in, and there is no place in a Jedi enclave for the Force-blind.

(How did she not know? She was so certain, so _certain_ -)

He's only a child, barely thirteen, with nothing but a suit of clothing, credits barely enough to live on for a month and a ticket on the next transport off-planet- and somehow, somewhere between boarding and the transport's last stop, he vanishes.

She looks for him, pulls as many transport logs and immigration reports as she can without drawing attention, but with the war raging and her focus pulled in a dozen directions she cannot leave the Jedi and all her leads run dry. When Coruscant falls, scant months later, she cannot even spare the time to look for him, only hopes beyond hope that he never made it anywhere near the Core Worlds.

By the time the treaty's signed, she no longer knows where to look. She should tell Jace- he has resources she doesn't, different strings he could pull- but they've barely spoken in the years since she walked away and where would she even start?

 _You have a son. I gave him up, and-_

 _You have a son. I didn't tell you because-_

 _You have a son-_

No. Impossible.

The Jedi sent him away. She never quite forgives them for that. She never quite forgives herself.

* * *

It takes nearly a year, but the Coruscant market's nearly rebuilt. She almost walks past the jeweler's stall- she's got no use for finery, after all- but the little display of lockets catches her eye. They're pretty things, delicately engraved and hanging from silver chains, tiny people and animals and symbols hovering above each one.

Despite herself, she stops.

"Do they only come with these pictures?"

"Oh, no," the craftswoman says, catching one up in her hand, turning it over to show her the dataport cleverly hidden near the hinge. "You can load anything you like. These are just for display."

She hesitates for a moment. She shouldn't, but-

"All right." She reaches into her pocket for her credit chip. "How much?"

* * *

The past is immutable.

She wishes it wasn't, telling herself again and again that it's better this way, burying mistake after mistake in the graveyard of things sacrificed and duty upheld. She is wrong.

This is not better. This is purgatory.

 _There is no emotion. There is-_

A lie. A lie she has internalized so deeply she knows it for a truth. The absence of emotion isn't peace; it's _nothingness_ , a void of useless complacency deep enough to drown in.

She should have told Theron that she recognized him on the night he came to tell her of Ngani Zho's death, should have told him that of course she knew her own child- even ten years since she last saw an image of him, even twenty-three years after she last held him in her arms. But she waited for him to say it first and he never did, walked away with the words hanging unsaid in the air between them.

(Oh, he reminds her so much of Jace. The same stubbornness, always taking the difficult way to prove a point and managing it anyway- she's so proud of him.

She should have told him that, too.)

"You know where to find me," she'd said once, "if you ever need my help. Reach out to me and I will be there." Instead she's been hiding on Odessen for years, now, another mistake, waiting for- what? An omen? A Force-damned miracle? She is supposed to be here; she is certain of it and Marr agrees, but she does not for the life of her have any idea why.

(If anyone had told her she would spend years of her life camping in the wilderness with no one but the ghost of a Sith Lord for company, she would have laughed herself sick at the idea.

And yet-)

* * *

 _She's awake_ , Marr says as he flickers into view beside her. _She will have questions._

Satele nods, rocks back on her heels and rises from where she was crouched beside the fire. "I'll speak with her."

She- the former Cipher Nine, the Outlander, the commander of the new alliance that's taken root here, the unwilling host of the spirit of the Sith Emperor- is sitting on the ramp when she approaches the ship, holding something in her hand, looking down at it with an expression that's half amusement and half sorrow.

The locket's open, the little hologram flickering in her palm. Satele raises one hand to her neck reflexively, reaching for the chain that ought to be there, not trailing through someone else's fingers; she remembers, brushing bare skin, that she'd left it beside her chair last night.

"Hello, Satele." she glances up after a moment, hollow-eyed and pale. She looks better than she did in the woods, but only a little. "Am I dead?"

"No. You came near it, but no."

"Am I dreaming?"

She chuckles, sits down on the ramp beside her. "No. What makes you ask that?"

"Well, you're here, for one thing, which frankly seems unlikely, and-" her eyes drop down to the locket- "is this Theron? When he was a child?"

"Thirteen. Yes."

"I can't believe," she says, "that he's still wearing the same damned jacket."

* * *

 _Will he forgive me, do you think?_

 _Yes_ , she says. _But it only matters if you want to be forgiven._

(They have the same conversation in reverse, on their way back to the Alliance camp, and it is just as true.)

* * *

She can hear him down the hallway and she has to force herself to stop pacing.

"You know we agreed no more secrets." It's hard to make the words out, the next few inaudible. "-can't we just-"

The door slides open.

It's been five years since she last saw her son.

His mouth falls open and he seems about to turn around when, behind him, a pair of hands shove him gently into the room.

"You told me she left." Theron looks back and forth between her and the Commander. ( _You can call me Nine_ , she'd said. _I don't much care for the title, to be honest. I wasn't given much choice in the matter._ ) "I thought-"

Nine, smiling, nudges him another step forward. "I lied. If it's the last one I'm allowed, I thought it ought to be a good one. I'll be back in half an hour with cakes and caf. Now-" she turns, back through the door, shutting it behind her as she calls through the narrowing gap- "talk."

"She told me you left," he says again, rubbing his eyes, still standing just inside the entrance to the little meeting room.

"She wouldn't let me. To be more specific, she threatened to have my ship shot down if I didn't come to see you. I'm fairly sure she was serious, so-"

"So talking to me _is_ preferable to dying. I'm glad."

She deserved that, but that doesn't make it sting any less.

With a sigh, she sinks into one of the cushioned chairs, suddenly feeling every one of her sixty-seven years. This was a terrible idea: too much time wasted, too many chances squandered. Why did she ever think-

"I-" He steps further in, at least, until he's standing beside her. "That was unfair. I'm sorry."

"Perhaps-" she looks up at him, gestures to the chair next to hers- "we should start over, then."

After a moment, he nods.

"Hello, Theron."

"Hi, mom," he says, and sits.

It is a start.


End file.
